


Time Shifting Weight

by TheOceanIsMyInkwell



Series: A Little Unsteady [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Violence, Canon-Typical Violence, Dialogue Heavy, Heavy Angst, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt/Comfort, I need therapy, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Instant Kill Mode, May and Pepper are literally just mentioned once or twice, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Peter Parker Gets a Hug, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker Whump, Post-Civil War (Marvel), Skip Westcott is mentioned, The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, Tony Stark Has A Heart, but dw there are no flashbacks, can you believe i produced a 7k piece of oneshot trash, i guess?, this is super Peter and Tony centric my lads, trust me tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 15:36:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14957342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOceanIsMyInkwell/pseuds/TheOceanIsMyInkwell
Summary: A full-body flinch courses through Peter. It’s not alarming--just a neurological tic of exhaustion that has Tony on his feet and crossing the small patch of distance left between them to sit on the nearest corner of the coffee table.Peter opens his eyes and blinks up at Tony, or rather at the shadow that falls over his pale face, and gives a tiny wave that under any other specific set of circumstances would be downright ridiculous. “Hi, Mr. Stark.”“Hi, kid. Wanna talk?”Peter goes to open his mouth but hesitates. They both know he’s too intelligent to play the innocent card now. The words replay themselves of their own accord in Tony’s mind--instant kill, instant kill, instant, kill, kill--One good look at Peter’s eyes confirms the kid is on the same page.---When Tony gets the alert that Spider-Man has activated Instant Kill Mode for the first time, he expects to see May being kidnapped on the footage, or maybe Ned or even MJ. The last thing he expects is to see Peter with his fingers wrapped around the neck of a random teenager. Lying in the shadows under a coffee table, Peter finally pours out to Tony the details of his troubled past.





	Time Shifting Weight

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: First off, this is in no way Infinity War compliant. I thought I could work IW into the timeline of this series, but after I got to the end of typing out this oneshot, I realized I coudn't. You'll see why later. That being said, there will be no IW spoilers in this fic! Whoohoo!
> 
> Secondly, although there are no flashbacks in this story and I designed the timeline to be kept strictly in the present, please take care of yourself if you decide to read this. All possible triggers are listed in the tags. I care about y'all and want you to be safe.
> 
> And thirdly--anyone who knows me closely knows that a story like this wasn't long in coming. From what I understand, Peter Parker from the comics canonically talks about a past of sexual abuse, so this isn't exactly an AU (just in the sense that it's never mentioned in the MCU). Even more than that, though, I draw somewhat from my personal experiences with this kind of topic, so the way I portray/project myself onto Peter here may or may not coincide with the experiences and emotions of others who have gone through the same thing. This oneshot is not meant to be representative of a collective kind of experience of child/sexual abuse. It's more a snapshot of an individual's experience.
> 
> Without further ado, kindly read with caution, and I hope you enjoy. :)
> 
> Theme song and title inspiration: ["Uneven Odds" by Sleeping at Last](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytn5FhI3Qwg)

Tony gets the alert at precisely 4:57 a.m. He knows, because he’s lying awake on top of his covers in his actual pajamas in a veiled attempt at sleep, staring instead at the ceiling above where the hologram of Pepper’s contact photo is still projected from their video chat four hours ago.

“Boss, Peter has just activated Instant Kill Mode.”

“What.” 

The word is knocked out of him flat. Neither a question nor a statement. An unnamed emotion.

It should frighten him, the mere split second it takes for his body to slide into autopilot. Not even his heart has enough time to register the first taste of panic and begin to gallop in his chest. The next thing he knows, he’s on his feet facing the security system and calling out for FRIDAY to pull up the Baby Monitor footage, _stat_. Under any other circumstances--meeting with Steve, Banner, even Rhodey or Pepper--he would be barking out commands at the AI.

Not tonight. Tonight, his throat is already closing up too fast for his breath to catch up. That’s how he knows the fear is the worst: when it comes in deathly silence.

“On it, boss. Pulling up the footage transmitted by Karen as we speak.”

The hologram flickers to life, eerily _in media res_. The last second of a wheezing breath, cut off by a crack of knuckles against bone, plays over FRIDAY’s speakers.

The video is shaky. It doesn’t even make sense--Tony specifically installed the highest-quality stabilizers in Karen’s system--but the frame being projected in front of him right now still quivers. There’s a hand in front of the camera--a fist--no. A hand wrapped around a throat. A red-gloved hand.

Heavy breathing fills his ears.

Tony’s senses feel as though they are suspended in time as he stares ahead, uncomprehending. And then, all at once, everything rushes in and everything makes dreadful, horrible sense. 

Peter’s breaths behind the mask are short and labored. Tony can almost feel the spike in the kid’s heart rate from this far away. Much like his lungs, Peter’s body is likewise trembling all over. Waves of dangerous energy roll off him into the footage and punch Tony straight in the chest with a blank, petrified denial.

He’s choking a kid. Spider-Man--no, Peter--has his right hand sealed like vice around the neck of a gangly teenager and he’s choking him. There is nothing but a cold cement wall behind the stranger’s back, and the wild flickering of his green eyes shows he knows it.

Everything is becoming clearer and yet nothing makes sense at all.

Tony should do something. He should move, talk to FRIDAY, order her to put a call in to Karen.

But he can’t. His feet are rooted to the spot, an utter dead weight. In all the times he’d run over this exact scenario in his head while programming the suit with Instant Kill Mode, not once had he imagined that he would freeze so suddenly and simply stand there watching the footage of some stranger’s death without an ounce of strength to do something.

“How long did you think you could go on doing this?”

Tony jolts to life. It’s Peter's voice, crackling a bit over the connection. His tone is deeper. Darker. Far, far more menacing than anything he could have imagined the kid being capable of.

The green-eyed boy writhes again in Peter’s grip. His hands are clawing at the red glove, but it’s useless, he knows it’s useless, everyone knows. Sticky smears of crimson and mud mottle the boy’s knuckles. There’s more of it all over his hoodie, the front of his shirt, across his jaw, around his nose and above his eyebrow, Tony suddenly realizes.

“P-please,” the boy gasps out. His entire body, which once was flailing with a maddening intensity, has begun to jerk of its own accord.

“Please, what?”

“I--I c-can’t--please--”

“Can’t breathe? Is that what you wanted to say?”

Perhaps Peter loosens his hold on the boy’s neck just a fraction, because abruptly the latter lets out a moan.

“Isn’t that what she said, too? When you were hurting her? She said she couldn’t breathe. She _said_ you were making her choke. Right?” When the boy only offers another tiny gasp, Peter surges forward with another coil of energy and shoves the teenager’s body back against the cement. An animalistic cry breaks forth from the boy’s mouth.

Peter speaks again and it floors Tony to hear him snarl. “ _Right_ , Harrison? Didn’t she say that to you? Did you even stop to _fucking_ listen?”

The boy is spluttering out another senseless concatenation of apologies and pleas. “N-no, please, you d-don’t--it’s not--don’t understand--sorry--”

“You _shut the fuck up_!” Peter roars. “Shut it. Shut it. I don’t understand? Huh? I don’t understand? She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t _breathe_. Don’t you get it? She--she couldn’t--”

Oh, fuck.

As it stands, the situation has only been clarified by about two percent to Tony, but he knows he has to act now. His brain is screaming at him to move. Finally, _finally_ , his mouth and throat begin to work again.

“FRIDAY, call Karen.”

The AI obeys without so much as a verbal acknowledgment; even she knows the situation is dire. Over the audio of the projection, Peter’s labored breathing suddenly projects three times as loudly as before. Tony’s connected.

“Kid! What’s going on?”

Peter doesn’t respond. The only indication that he knows Tony is on the line is that his right hand abruptly lowers from the teenager’s neck. Half a second later, the battered teen crumples to the pavement in a heap of bones and blubbering. He cowers in the puddle where the cement meets the ground, and he doesn’t move. Neither does Peter.

“Peter,” Tony says again, louder. “Peter. Are you listening? Kid. Talk to me. What the fuck is going on?”

Still Peter remains silent. The view of the camera tilts down, letting Tony know that Peter has angled his head to take a closer look at the pile of trembling teenager and crusted blood on the ground before him.

The breaths in the audio become impossibly faster. The camera shakes once more--violently--as some kind of spasm seems to course through Peter’s body, and he wrestles with his lungs to gain control of his breathing again.

“Peter, it’s okay,” Tony goes on, even though it’s anything but. He knows even his voice bears a slightly hysterical tinge to it, and the kid can sense it. But Tony’s adult instincts and years of training are kicking in, and he knows that the first thing he has to do is damage control. “Peter, I’m not angry. I just need you to do me a favor. Tell Karen to deactivate Instant Kill Mode. Do you think you can do that for me?” More silence. Another shiver. “Peter? Deactivate Instant Kill and web up the guy and then leave. Can you do that for me?”

Tony knows he can disable IKM right from where he stands. He has his index finger poised over the two keys that will do the job. But he’s waiting, assessing, gambling a few precious seconds to see just how far gone Peter is in his state of mind.

He should have listened to the part of his mind that was screaming all along that this was a mistake.

The next thing he knows, the view from Karen’s live footage takes a somersault and then plunges into almost black. Panic spikes in Tony’s throat. He doesn’t hesitate. He punches the keys to disable IKM--like he should have done ten seconds ago--and he swears in a ragged voice like his life depends on it.

Tony squints at the projection. It’s not quite black. He can almost discern infinitesimal reflections of amber light, as if the eyes of the mask are crumpled against the sheen of the pavement slickened by rain. Something cold and unfathomable scuttles down Tony’s spine. With the mask off, the phone connection is practically useless as well. As is Peter Parker’s secret identity.

Tony flings up a hand, prepared to see his suit come flying out to him at full velocity, when FRIDAY’s voice startles him. “Boss, he’s left his previous location and is making his way rapidly toward the compound.”

It takes every shard of self-control for Tony to send his suit back into standby mode and not go tearing off from the roof into the weeping night sky. He needs to get Peter. He needs to get the kid. He needs to figure out what the fuck is going on.

The kid. 

Instant Kill. The kid. Not an alien, not a gang of villainous arms dealers or kidnappers. A scrawny teenager in some beaten-down alley. 

Thoughts, fears, scenarios, _what if_ s rip through his mind faster than the rest of him can keep up and they stumble one after another over each other before his eyes. His breath hitches, evens out again. He presses a hand against his ribs and exerts an almost vicious pressure, as if compressing his heart will get it to stop thumping for a goddamn minute.

It must be less than five minutes when he hears it, but talking himself down from his own panic attack has left Tony unaware of the passage of time. He senses more than hears it: the clash of bone with tempered glass and the tumble of a body against the concrete of the balcony. 

Without prompting, FRIDAY slides the glass door open and the mop of Peter’s hair becomes visible. He’s on his hands and knees on the balcony, crumpled red mask in one fist.

Tony blinks. Forgets to breathe. Nothing is making sense at all.

Peter does not get up. Instead, he sucks in a shuddering breath and crawls inside.

Tony crosses the living room in a flash to prop the kid up against the nearest wall away from the glass door. Tracks of mud and rain are seeping down from Peter’s body into the carpet, but Tony could care less right now. He runs his eyes cursorily over the drenched strands of hair plastered to Peter’s ashen forehead and the messy splash of dark color across his cheekbone which looks suspiciously like a bouquet of bruises. Tony almost can’t believe his ears when he realizes how steady his own voice sounds all of a sudden. “Are you hurt?”

Peter doesn’t speak. Tony knows he probably couldn’t even if he tried. The kid simply shakes his head.

Tony is prepared to accept that answer, when his gaze dips down to where the kid’s legs are tangled in an awkward position and he registers the dark crimson tinge to the mud creeping across the carpet.

“No, you’re injured. Kid. Kid! Look at me. Is it your leg? Which one?”

No response.

“You’re bleeding, Peter. I know you think it’s shallow, and it probably is, but I’m going to need to take a look anyway. You’re notorious for hiding this sort of shit from me.” Tony has no idea what possessed him to attempt to crack jokes at a time like this, but he will stop at nothing to try to bring the kid back to earth and ground him there.

Lips still twisted in a half-smile that doesn’t quite light his eyes, Tony cautiously reaches forward to turn over Peter’s right thigh, where he thought he initially saw the blood dripping from. Only then does Peter finally react--violently.

“Uncle Ben, no!”

Tony jerks his hand back. Something rattles in his chest: a thump, a gallop and the chilling purity of a foreign brand of terror.

He’s been expecting the kid to slip and call him something like _dad_ one of these days. Hell, he’s even dreamed of that moment with idealistic fantasies of adoptive fatherhood. Pepper and Rhodey weren’t the first ones to tease him about those secrets thoughts, nor were they the last.

But this. This? It strikes him speechless. It can’t be. This is the stuff his future nightmares are made of.

The kid cannot, can _never_ , see him as his dead uncle. No one can take that man’s place.

All this courses through Tony’s brain in the span of all of three seconds, and then he levels his gaze at the kid. To his shock, Peter is staring right back at him with far more clarity and emotional control than he ever would have expected.

Something passes between the two in the moment they lock eyes. Not an apology, not a demand for an explanation. Simply an understanding that the name that hangs in the air will never be uttered like that again.

“He touched me there,” the kid says. There’s no tremor in his voice. Just a steady rawness. It is difficult for Tony to tell if in this moment Peter is completely with him, if he knows whom he is really addressing, but he has to fall back on the overwhelming comprehension shining there in Peter’s eyes and trust that the kid does in fact know where he is and what he’s saying.

Tony has no idea what to say. He’s floundering in a sea with no water, with no waves to beat against.

“I’ll get the first aid kit,” he says at last. “If you’re up to it, you can take a look at it yourself. I’ll be around if you need help.”

Two minutes later when Tony returns with the bandages and enhanced antibiotics, Peter hasn’t even de-fitted the suit. There he lies with his head pressed against the wall at a painful angle, hands locked around the crusted wound on his upper thigh, eyes trained on an invisible nothing on the ceiling as his Adam’s apple bobs up and down in silence.

Tony has the distinct feeling that even if he asked the kid to take off the suit now, he would not. And he is not about to forcibly peel the thing from Peter’s skin. Not after how he saw Peter flinch bodily from his touch.

Peter dresses the wound through the rip in his suit with an astonishing firmness to his movements. Tony watches like a hawk for the slightest tremble in his fingers, but there is none. He used to be able to read the kid like a book, but now he is overwhelmed once again by that foreign and demanding feeling that all his readings are wrong and he truly doesn’t know this kid at all.

Five minutes pass in stillness and silence. Even this amount of stillness is unusual for a depressed Peter.

At some point, Tony gets up to rummage in the mini fridge of his bedroom for two root beers. It feels sacrilegious to toss one to Peter, so he comes as near as he dares and hands the can to him instead. The pop and fizz that ensues feels wrong. Too domestic. Too right.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?”

Peter gestures contradictorily to the bruises littering his cheek. “No.”

“What about him?”

“Probably a cracked rib. Bruises. I don’t know about his nose.”

 _And his throat?_ Tony swallows the question down with a burning shot of his soft drink.

They spend the next six, seven, eight minutes like that in another globe of tension. They sip the root beer, taking turns lifting the can to their lips. Their breaths alternate. Tony finds that neither of them is panicking anymore. His eyes flit across the lines in Peter’s brow and then to the shallow cut in his lip which persistently shows up after every patrol. Peter’s eyes wander upward, swerve clumsily, but inevitably lock on his, and the immediate regret for the eye contact turns into a palpable taste of rust on their palates.

Tony speaks first. It’s easy, really, if he starts from the beginning: a harmless observation. “It’s four hours past your curfew. May know you’re not home yet?”

“I was home. I was almost sleeping.”

Tony doesn’t prompt. He understands that doing so would ruin everything this moment has built up to.

“My senses were going haywire. I could hear-- _everything_. Not just my neighbors or the cars from ten blocks away. I could hear whispers from halfway across the neighborhood and--and--I could hear--hear her scream.”

Peter stands up abruptly and sways on his feet where the carpet is stained through with his blood and dirt. Tony watches him with his brow knit in concern, yet he dares not move. He watches as Peter paces, then aborts his own path and beelines for the coffee table. Peter sits on the corner and jiggles his leg. That does not satisfy him for even half a minute. He sets the half-empty can of root beer down behind him in the center of the table, gets up again, makes a lap around the couch. Sits down against the armrest. Then gets up again and crawls under the coffee table on his side.

Tony has seen him like this before: fidgeting, bouncing off the walls, pacing and tearing scrap paper from his pockets, sometimes even snapping pen after pen when his anxiety gets the best of his control. But the man has to admit that he has never seen a display from Peter quite as bizarre as this. Normally, the kid limits his endless movements and nervous tics to rambles about different topics, fingers through his hair, and laps around the lab. Not this disjointed, unpredictable path like watching a haphazardly animated video clip.

And something squeezes his heart inside him when he sees how Peter has finally settled into a loose fetal position under the low-set coffee table. After the whole fiasco with the Vulture which became a sort of turning point in Peter’s superheroing career, cramped spaces are now the kid’s worst nemesis.

Tony pulls his legs up to rest his forearms on his knees. His can is now empty and dangles from his right hand. He cocks his head to try to coax Peter into lifting his eyes from behind his arms.

“Hey,” the man says softly.

Peter stirs. Of course he does. Super hearing means he can decipher between Tony’s playful whispers and his tender murmurs which usually mean he’s about to break, or he expects the kid to break instead.

Tony asks: “You good?”

Peter moves his head, then his shoulders, and finally the rest of his body so he is no longer curled up, but rather lying loosely under the coffee table with his eyes trained on Tony’s at an angle. “I’m good.”

God. He looks so old and so young at the same time.

Questions are burning like ice behind Tony’s teeth. He picks one. Another easy one. He’s always been a cheater that way. “Is she okay?”

“As okay as she’ll ever be.”

That’s...that’s far more words than Tony expected. He really shouldn’t be surprised, considering how coherent Peter was even after accidentally calling him by his uncle’s name and the fact that the kid had dressed his own wound ten minutes after crashing into a glass door. But there seems to be something dreadfully deliberate, calculated, about Peter’s choice to be so articulate this time around.

“She was alone, but I left her with the old lady next door. The police were on their way. I wouldn’t---wouldn’t just leave--I’d never--”

“I know,” Tony interrupts, saving him.

A full-body flinch courses through Peter then. It’s not alarming--just a neurological tic of exhaustion that has Tony on his feet and crossing the small patch of distance left between them to sit on the nearest corner of the coffee table.

Peter opens his eyes and blinks up at Tony, or rather at the shadow that falls over his pale face, and gives a tiny wave that under any other specific set of circumstances would be downright ridiculous. “Hi, Mr. Stark.”

“Hi, kid. Wanna talk?”

Peter goes to open his mouth but hesitates. They both know he’s too intelligent to play the innocent card now. The words replay themselves of their own accord in Tony’s mind-- _instant kill, instant kill, instant, kill, kill_ \--

One good look at Peter’s eyes confirms the kid is on the same page.

“If you come down here, yeah.”

Tony’s brow furrows. Not the ultimatum he was expecting. But then he considers how this must look from the kid’s perspective, loose-limbed and vulnerable on the floor with a table of solid wood over his chest and a full-grown man looming over him, silhouetted by FRIDAY’s dim lights.

“Sure thing, Underoos.”

This has to be the weirdest set of movements Tony’s body has ever had to make. He slides off the corner of the table knees first, braces himself against the edge of the couch ahead and twists as he lowers himself to the floor. Then he scoots down in one long movement until half his torso is covered by the table and he can turn his head against the carpet to look Peter directly in the eye.

“She’s eight years old.” For the first time that entire night, Peter’s voice cracks.

Tony hums back with a feigned indifference that he knows Peter will recognize as the mask settling over the black thoughts already racing through the man’s head. They both have dark imaginations.

Peter draws a breath from somewhere deep within him. He continues, steadier this time. “Her parents are on separate business trips. Not their fault. He’s been around the family since before she was born. Next-door neighbor, I think. No. Three doors down, yeah. The old lady talked to me about it.”

There is an absolute tornado of emotions raging inside Tony’s rib cage. He has no idea what this eight-year-old angel looks like; for some reason, the image of a bright-faced girl with frizzy black hair and chocolate irises pops into his head, maybe almost like a miniature version of Peter’s friend MJ whom he has only seen in Instagram selfies. He shoves away the image with a silent snarl.

“Her name’s Eliza.”

God, no. Please don’t put a name to her. Something inside Tony plummets to his toes. He tenses without realizing it, his eyes whip wildly to the side to meet Peter’s, to look at him, to _beg_ him not to say the other guy’s name--

And in the name of all things holy, thank the stars, Peter doesn’t.

“She’ll be okay,” Tony hears somebody saying. The gravelly tracks to his voice don’t sound like his own. “I promise, Peter. She’ll be okay. The lady will help her tell her parents and the police will come and--and th-the _fucker_ will be--”

“I know,” Peter cuts in with that same jolting clarity.

Tony feels the tension ebbing somewhat. The smattering of conversation they’ve had so far has helped to clarify some things, but not all. Not the _why_.

Peter shuffles his body across the carpet to rest an inch or two closer to Tony. “Remember that night in June?”

The man doesn’t need to ask which one. There is only one night in June to remember, the one when he had a styrofoam cup of coffee clutched in his fist as he fell to the floor in a panic attack at one in the morning. And Peter had been the one to catch him and ground him and speak to him with the voice of reason of an adult. 

Dread begins to pool again in his stomach. He tells himself over and over in his head like a mantra that the kid is not going to bring up the part of the conversation that he thinks he’s going to bring up, but he already knows he’s dead wrong.

“There’s this kid that lives in Queens, Mr. Stark.”

This is how it starts.

Tony doesn’t ask for his name. He doesn’t think he can handle another one, not after Eliza.

He glances over to find a glassy look on the kid’s eyes. His gaze is fixed on the ceiling. After another second, Tony shifts, lays one arm over his stomach, and does the same.

“His guardians are really good to him,” Peter goes on. “They take care of him as best they can. They both have to work a lot--two, three jobs between them, most of the time. They always try to make sure they’re there for the kid, though, because they’re good people that way.” A fervor creeps into Peter’s voice that borders on defensiveness. “It’s not their fault, Mr. Stark. It never was.”

Tony nods once. He would never dream of thinking for a second that it was their fault.

“His aunt suddenly got a promotion at the hospital, though. Too good to pass up, y’know? It had her working double shifts and all sorts of odd hours but...at least the pay was great. Well, not great, but better. You know. His uncle was really overjoyed about it, actually. And even though his aunt was working so hard and things were looking up, his uncle never stopped working, not for a second of his life. He was even talking about scrapping up enough to finally start that business. It’s just...they were worried about the kid. Like, what the kid would do at home after school and all that.

“I mean, the kid was fine, really. He was super shy and quiet and kept to himself in his room. There was no need to worry about him. I mean. Did I mention he was quiet? Yeah. He just did his homework and played with Legos and sometimes called his best friend using the neighbor’s phone when he needed someone to talk to. So...yeah.

“His uncle was real responsible, though. Like. You know how adults are and all that sh-shit.” Suddenly Peter stumbles on the curse word, like he wants to take it back the instant half of it is out in the air. Tony’s silence lets him know that the slip is forgiven, that he’s allowed to go on.

“H-he knew this guy who lived on the same floor. Steve. Everybody called him Skip. He hardly charged anything for babysitting, uh, just said he needed extra cash for, like, his school books and stuff. He was in high school, see. He was sixteen. And--and--the kid was, uh, ten.”

Tony’s heart slams against his chest.

This is how everything starts to fall.

“You don’t have to keep going if you don’t want to.” Tony falters at the tail end of his sentence: _kid_? _Pete_? _Underoos_? There is no moniker in existence that could even begin to disguise the weight of what Parker is about to say.

“I--I need to.”

“I’m worried, kiddo. Are you really okay doing this?”

“Yeah.” Peter nods vigorously. “Y-yeah. I just--I--”

“Tell me what you need, kid.”

Peter’s tongue suddenly feels thick against the roof of his mouth. “I need to tell you. J-just...I don’t know how.”

Tony doesn’t want him to go on. He knows Peter’s voice may appear steady, but God, he would give up anything in the world at this moment to pry away the nameless thing that has wrapped itself around the kid’s throat. And he, too, understands that recondite need to go on talking, to let it all out, even when the knife just twists itself deeper between his ribs.

Tony clears his throat. “I could...ask questions.”

“That’d be a good way to go.”

Tony indulges himself in an eye roll at the accidental double meaning in the boy’s words. Peter rolls his eyes right back.

“So.”

“So,” Tony says back.

Predictably, Peter reaches forward for something to fidget with. He presses a hand against the bottom of the coffee table and manages to look surprised when it lifts under a single finger. “So,” Peter says again, still staring contemplatively at the table balanced in his grasp about two inches off the floor. “Questions.”

“Uh-huh. Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I’m okay now, aren’t I?”

“Buddy.” Tony’s dry, sad tone veils the real meaning of his reproach: _You just almost strangled a stranger to death. Granted, he’s a pervert. But still_.

Peter lowers the coffee table back to the carpet and occupies himself this time with shooting a web to grab his half-empty can of root beer. “Next question, Mr. Stark.”

“How long did it happen?”

The only indication of a visceral reaction from the boy is the jarring sound of the can crumpling halfway in his hand. His answer is immediate, like a knee-jerk reaction. “Six times.”

“Did you tell your aunt and uncle? How’d they find out?”

“I told Ned. Ned told them.”

Something fierce glows inside Tony. An accomplished hacker _and_ a brave and loyal friend? That Leeds kid is getting a job at SI straight out of high school.

“And what’d they do?”

“Kicked him out, of course. Uncle Ben wanted to beat him within an inch of his life a-and...I think May would have let him, but she decided to make him do what was right. There were, like, police and all. Of course.”

Tony doesn’t miss the way the can has completely disappeared in Peter’s fist, nor how the kid’s eyes are scrunched shut. The man’s jaw ripples. “He didn’t get prosecuted, did he,” he says flatly.

“No. Minor and all that.”

“Not even for juvie?”

Abruptly, Peter’s eyes fly open. His pupils shrink to pinpricks in half a beat. “I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t. I didn’t.” He seems to get stuck on the words, repeats them yet another time, perplexed at why he can’t move forward.

“So you wouldn’t have wanted to be a witness, in any case,” Tony fills in for him. “And I assume the court decided to respect that.”

“I guess so. Something like that. I just--I didn’t. I didn’t.” Peter jerks upright into a semi-sitting position against the couch, tugging at the hair on the back of his head with his right hand. His face is still awash with confusion and maybe even panic.

“Hey, hey. _Hey_. Peter. It’s all right. I understand. Everything’s okay, bud. Right? It’s okay that you didn’t. _It’s okay_.” Tony already has his left hand outstretched, careful not to brush against Peter’s arm but ready to do so if the touch will serve to ground the kid.

“Y-yeah. I know. It’s okay. I’m okay.”

It sounds to Tony a lot like the kid is trying to convince himself more than anyone else, but he lets it go.

An impregnable silence falls on them. It is punctuated only by Peter’s labored breathing as it slowly softens and then evens out.

Everything in Tony screams that this fucker Skip should have been thrown behind bars for the rest of his life, but he cannot utter it. Not when a sixteen-year-old boy is curled up between his couch and the coffee table with a soda can crushed in his hand and a torrent of dry tears stopping up his throat.

“They tried to take me to therapists,” Peter speaks up suddenly. Tony jumps a little. “They really tried. And I’m--I’m grateful. But it didn’t help because, because it--because I--couldn’t talk about it. I didn’t.”

This time, Tony hastens to place a palm on Peter’s knee before his brain can fall back into the inescapable loop of _I didn’t_. Peter shoots him a look from the side of his eyes that could almost be characterized as grateful.

The boy mutters: “I couldn’t breathe. Not when they were asking me questions. Because I couldn’t breathe when it was--when he--so. That’s all my brain could remember. That’s all I could feel when they asked me to go back to that. It’s like, like, I never learned the meaning of oxygen.”

Memories of Peter’s dark and terrible voice from tonight wash through Tony’s mind in a million shades of obsidian, like a rainbow tainted with death. 

_You shut the fuck up! Shut it. Shut it. I don’t understand? Huh? I don’t understand? She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe. Don’t you get it? She--she couldn’t--_

“Did he…?”

In response, Peter starts clawing at his own shoulder through the suit. His lips grow white. “Yes. In the mouth.”

There are so many things to unpack here that Tony doesn’t think he could sit up on his own even if he tried. Can he touch Peter again? Will it help him or only harm him? How did the kid know what he was trying to ask? And how could--how could he just state it so plainly?

The excruciating nostalgia of that sensation of drowning in a waterless sea returns to the man at full force. He has no idea, God, he has no _fucking_ idea how to handle this. What to do. What to say. He knows, somewhere deep within him, the kinds of emotions that dwell there that need to be expressed--that the kid needs to know at all costs--but he can’t trust his tongue now not to betray him.

“I want you to know I think no less of you.”

There. He’s said something.

Or rather, it’s been said for him. He will never know where that came from or how his voice acted on his behalf to form those eleven crucial words.

Peter surprises him then by replying, “I know you don’t.” His eyes are wide open again. Pupils dark and dilated, hyper-focused on every next syllable that Iron Man is about to utter. “I know you don’t, Mr. Stark. I...I haven’t trusted you about a lot of things which I should have, but...I trust you enough that I wanted to tell you.”

Why does the kid’s last statement make Tony’s heart twist even harder?

“That’s great, but...let me finish, kid.” The man is gruff in that awkward brand of kindness that is uniquely Tony Stark. “I don’t think less of you, but I do think differently of you. You know why?”

Peter gulps. He looks down.

“Hey. Hey, buddy. Look at me, please? I think differently of you now because if I didn’t think before that you’re half as brave as you really are, well, I was goddamn wrong about you. Okay? Got that? Listen. This isn’t even about Spider-Man. This is--this is--this is _bigger_ than Spider-Man. Okay? This is about Peter Parker. About what _Peter Parker_ survived and how goddamn _brave_ Peter Parker is, with or without the suit.”

Tony’s rambling. Peter begins to look up and listen.

“Christ,” Tony chokes out after a small moment. “It’s just. Well. You wanna know something? Yeah, you do. I’m proud of you. But it doesn’t even matter what I think of you because this isn’t about me, nope. No. This is about you. So you should be proud of yourself.”

For the first time in several minutes, Peter speaks again. And for the second time that night, his tone rests just on the edge of broken. “I almost killed somebody tonight, Mr. Stark. I don’t know why you’re celebrating.”

Tony almost goes for the obvious quip. _Oh, we’re bringing in the k-word now, are we_. Or _it happens to the best of us, buddy_. Almost. But he doesn’t. 

“I would have done it myself in a heartbeat. But you didn’t.”

“I nearly did. Up until the point when you called.”

“Exactly. If you’d been really too far gone, then you wouldn’t have listened.”

“But if you _hadn’t_ called--all it took was--”

“Hey. Peter. Listen to me. We don’t think about the _what if_ ’s and _suppose-I-had_ ’s in this business, got it? I got the alert. You stopped when I asked you to. That’s far more self-control in itself than any grown superhero would have been able to take credit for. I know you’ve got the whole shame-and-guilt tandem thing going on as part of your brand, but I need you to believe me on this one.”

“Eyy, I learn from the best,” Peter croaks.

“Stop that,” Tony says fondly.

“Okay, Mr. Stark.”

“Do you want some hot cocoa?”

Peter eyes him with a quiet pleading. “Don’t leave.”

“I’m not. I’ll be right through that doorway making you the best damn instant hot cocoa there is in New York.”

“Sure?”

“Can you stand?”

“Maybe?”

“C”mon, kid.” Tony hauls himself up and holds out a hand, which Peter considers for a few seconds before taking it and stumbling to his feet.

The two shuffle into the kitchen in silence. Peter casts about for a place to lean against, and Tony is struck with the irrational, uncontrollable urge to laugh at how he is--just a _boy_ , trying to cross his arms with the self-assurance that only a grown vigilante in spandex could achieve. Peter finally decides to rest his elbows on the kitchen island and drop his head into his hands. Tony has seen Parker countless times like this, still clothed in his Spider-Man suit but bereft of his mask, yet tonight it is a jarring sight: the body of a hero just held together by the pain of a sixteen-year-old mind.

Peter doesn’t even seem to notice at first when Tony slides the hot mug across the counter to him. His eyes are closed. When he opens them again, he makes a sluggish move to bring the mug to his lips, and a sound of gratitude leaves him. 

Tony attempts a chuckle. “You’re welcome,” he says softly.

They continue to drink their hot cocoa in the quiet of the morning. The sudden realization washes over Tony that a bird is chirping outside and FRIDAY’s lights have dimmed to make way for the first fingers of sunlight in the window.

“I’ll call May,” the man offers.

Peter bobs his head.

“Hey, Underoos? What’s on your mind?”

“...I’m not brave.” Peter sets the mug down and traces the lip of it with a finger. “You’d probably like to think so, but...I’m not.”

Tony stops himself from arguing. Nods for Parker to continue.

“I didn’t even want to tell Ned. I didn’t. Couldn’t. He asked me why I hated my hair being touched. I couldn’t even--fucking _speak_ \--when Uncle Ben asked me if it was true. I was--I was--goddamit, I couldn’t even cry.”

Peter’s grip on the handle of the mug tightens. Tony can only imagine the level of self-control he is drawing from not to smash the thing right then and there.

“He always said I’d, I’d never want May or Ben to find out, to find out that--that _that_ \--I mean, that I was doing that with him. He was right. At the time I didn’t know a lot of things, but I did know that nobody wants to find out their kid was doing something so dirty.”

There are a million things Tony could say to that. Assure the boy he’s not dirty. Tell him May and Ben would never think of him that way. But he knows, from Peter’s tone, that the kid already knows these things: he just needs to let it out, the voice of a ten-year-old child.

“You told me...back on that night in June...that you made the mistake of trusting someone who was older, even though you knew what he was asking you to do was… ‘ _not good_ ’.”

“Something like that.”

“And it’s true. It was a mistake. But just because it was a mistake doesn’t mean you were in any way at fault. Okay? It’s a weird concept, trust me, I know. But even grown-ups deal with shit like this. There’s something in our gut telling us to do something or not to do it, but this brain up here?” Tony taps the side of his head. “This thing that loves to overthink things and be ruled by fear? That’s what we end up listening to. It happens to the best of us, Peter. Children are supposed to trust the adults around them--at least the people in their lives who are older. That’s the way it’s _supposed_ to be, Peter. But believe me, if the world actually operated that way, we’d have no need for superheroes.”

Peter gives a wordless nod.

“One more thing, Peter. What you did tonight? For Eliza? That was brave.”

He may not have said it, but the way Peter brings his head up and makes blazing eye contact with him then lets Tony know he heard the unspoken words. _I’m proud of you_.

Tony clears his throat softly, rubs his hands together. “Kid. Can I touch you?”

The boy nods vigorously. When the man hesitates another second, Peter straightens from where he’s leaned on the island and takes a step closer to his mentor. Tony doesn’t need a second prompting. He closes the gap in one stride and, arms wide open, engulfs the kid in an embrace of sweat and warmth and mud and--yes, blood, but--understandings. One hand slides up to cup Peter at the back of his neck, just below where his hair ends, and the other encircles his shoulders firmly.

 _I’m here. You’re here. I think differently of you now, because now I know how brave you are_.

Tony doesn’t even realize for several moments that Peter hasn’t reciprocated the gesture until he feels a shuffle of limbs and the kid’s arms finally come up to hug him back. There is no raw desperation, none of the unbridled emotion he half-expected in the way that Peter’s fingers dig into the back of Tony’s shoulders, but underneath the layer of sheer exhaustion Tony understands how big this is for Parker.

 _That’s not a hug. I’m just grabbing the door for you_.

Half an hour from now, when Peter is passed out on Tony’s bed instead of his own because the trip to the other suite is too long, the kid won’t have to know how Mr. Stark locked himself in a soundproofed room and screamed. He won’t have to know how Mr. Stark raised his fists to the walls and he hit and he hit and he hit until his skin cracked and his knuckles threatened to burst under the rivulets of red.

Three hours from now, when May Parker comes home from her shift at the hospital and calls Tony to ask if her nephew is okay, the kid won’t have to know how Mr. Stark speaks to her in a low voice stopped up by tears.

Five hours from now, when Pepper steps into the lab to run a hand of comfort down Tony’s back and peer at his sleepless form hunched over a worktable, the kid won’t have to know how Mr. Stark is gripping a screwdriver so tightly that the clumsy bandages on his hands are slipping apart. He won’t have to know how many hours Mr. Stark labors over that watch, a collapsible gauntlet shaped like the one Iron Man wears every day--a miniscule token of a man trying to protect the boy who he knows has already learned how to protect himself.

The kid won’t know, and he doesn’t need to know, because none of it matters. Not right now. Not when the only important thing is one thought that runs through Tony’s mind, and one thought alone.

 _This is more than a hug. I’m here to grab the weight of the world from your shoulders_.

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: ...So now you see why I couldn't fit IW in this series anymore?? In my universe, this is meant to be their first hug. Like. Listen. In MY house, any and all canon at this point can go f*** itself. B)
> 
> Initially, I wanted to write a second part (either separate or attached to the end here) describing Tony's private reactions after his heart-to-heart with Peter, but ultimately I decided to scrap that material in favor of my totally poetic, totally extra ending. Besides, I felt it was a little...wrong? Inappropriate? Not sure of the word I'm looking for--to focus all my attention on Tony's reaction, even for fictional purposes, when Peter's revelation is really about the kid's character and how _he_ has dealt with and survived the aftermath of his experience. So yes, Tony is there for him to hear him out afterward, but at the end of the day it's about Peter's character growth and Peter and Tony's growing relationship as father and son.
> 
> Thoughts? Comments? Kudos? Incoherent screaming? Any and all are appreciated :3
> 
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